Analytical Essay: Not being able to control nature

All humans are dreamers from the very moment we are born. Yet we all come to realize the sky cant always be the limit, and the ceiling doesn’t go forever.

In both poems, the authors understand this ideology and express it through their texts. Showing the lengths of our vast dreams and then dismantle them with the uncontrollableness of mother nature.  Both stories begin with dreams, imaginations and possibilities of life; yet, they both begin to cave in on themselves by the forces of nature. 

Bushed begins with a shining light of destructive lighting shattering the man’s rainbow.  Similarly, Winter evening begins with imagery about the shining snow of the evening sun “golden palaces”.  With these hopeful beginnings of each poem, things begin to go south. 

In the line “moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed their antlers up to the stars” In this metaphor Earle Birney demonstrates his poem’s theme very well. With this being the 6th stanza the man has tried conquering nature in the day in the previous 4 stanzas; however, the man gets repeatedly outdone by the wrath of nature. Earle personifies these trees yet they haven’t moved for hundreds of years; furthermore,  this man has deluded himself into thinking they have surrounded him which in most cases is a sign of danger.  I believe this is a big moment in the story as it pushes even closer to his tipping point of hiding in his shack.   On the other hand in winter evening the sun is used as a tool to carve out this beautiful setting.  As we keep reading the tool becomes quite dull and the light begins to dwindle.  “ With silence and the sharp unpitying stars, stern creeping frosts'' At the beginning of the poem the snow is once again used to show the mood; however, later on, this part of the story is much darker and unsettling.  Archibald knows this and wants the reader to see the transitions between the beginning and end like the transitions of night and day.   Using the snow as a tool to show this he never changes the setting like a picture but the mood shifts drastically.  This shows the true power of nature as we can’t control the rotation of the earth, night comes whether we like it or not and we can't avoid the chilling reality of the “awful night”

Both stories show the great strength of mother nature but winter evening lacks something bushed: A fight.  Throughout Bushed we can watch as this man slowly erodes into despair as the poem goes on.  Earle shows this with his pretty imagery and hopeful diction showed in the 3rd stanza.  Bushed begins with a  rainbow and in each stanza, we watch as the colours fade away. It begins with the lighting in the day and ends with fears of the night.  

“When he tried his eyes on the lake”  is an excellent example of how the man has fought the forces of nature before and has decided to move on to different heights. He loses this battle of course; yet, it goes without saying the man was determined and fought the impossible fight.   In winter evening we also see loss to the forces of nature but there is no one to create a conflict. Archibald shows a lot of the same dynamics and themes as Earle but he accepts it more. The begins the same but the change into the scary night is sudden and eerie. “And the hours shall a mightier master; soon from height to height”  After the first four transitions words Archibald shifts the mood of the story without any push back.  He shifts the story into this dark demise and just like the man in bushed we can only truly watch as this is nature's game, and we are just playing in it.

From birth and adolescence, humans dream and imagine infinite wonders of the world. As we grow older, and we flip through the pages of life we begin to realize they are just dreams. Figments are imagination too great for the game to allow. So they crumble and we bar them up into jails and face life realities with hopefully a bigger perspective.